Book Beginnings on Friday is a meme hosted at Rose City Reader. It’s really simple: Share the first sentence of the book you are currently reading and what it means to you.

I just started reading Quiet by Susan Cain, and it’s not the first sentence, but the first page that is incredibly powerful. The book is about introverts and how it is not necessarily bad to be one (yay for me!), and the example Cain begins with is of Rosa Parks; a tired woman who after a long day at work had the courage to simply say “no” when told to give up her seat on the bus taking her home. The Civil Rights movement may not have begun on that day, but it certainly gained unstoppable momentum, and Cain makes the point that if this happened to an extrovert like Martin Luther King, Jr. it may not have had the same impact (well, it likely did happen to him, but the point is that it would not have been as noticeable).

This anecdote is a strong beginning to the book as it highlights the “power” (I don’t think that is the right word) of being an introvert — that one might not say much but when they do the words have incredible meaning. I can’t wait to read further.

I have this one in audio, and I can’t wait to get to it! I am a combined introvert/extrovert, and I am planning on listening to this one with my husband, who is an extreme introvert. So glad to hear you are linking it. I hope I do too.

I put this on my too read list because I too have introverted tendencies and do type out in Myers-Briggs assessments this way. However, I am interested in how this book recognizes the continuum between the bookend classifications of these personality/operating style types. I often tell people I am an introverted extrovert because while there are many things I prefer to do alone, I love crowds, I love speaking, and I can be far from quiet. Furthermore, I have been pushing my envelope, to be less task based and more relationship based. Thanks for the book plug!